Painting her way to Cannes

long before her artwork travelled to the Cannes Film Festival on Alia Bhatt’s gown, Ahmedabad-based artist Basuri Chokshi had quietly built a world around hand-painted murals, luxury wallpapers and the slower rhythms of observation. Today, the artist finds herself at the centre of a global fashion conversation after collaborating with Rhea Kapoor and That Antiquepiece on Bhatt’s opening Cannes Film Festival look. 

Over nearly 110 hours, Chokshi painted Riviera blues, lavender fields and Mediterranean sunlight onto fabric, rarely allowing herself to think about where the gown would eventually go. Until the photographs of Bhatt at the festival, wearing the finished piece on one of fashion’s most-watched red carpets, went viral. 

However, despite the sudden shove into the limelight, Chokshi continues to speak with the same quietness, less dazzled by celebrity and more fascinated by process, atmosphere and feeling. 

“Global star sounds a little heavy for me,” she tells Mirror with a laugh. “But yeah, it feels incredible. I’m really happy it has come across as how we had envisioned the dress and why.”

Growing up around beauty 

Born and brought up in Ahmedabad, the 35-year-old realises in retrospect that art may have always existed around her in quieter forms. “My mother’s family follows Lord Krishna, so every 15 days, there were rituals, visuals, and decorations in the house temple. I’ve grown up seeing all of that,” she says. “My father is a gold jeweller. I’ve seen him and my grandfather making jewellery sketches. If I connect the dots now, somewhere I think I was always around visual beauty and design.”

Though she studied interior design, painting eventually became non-negotiable. “I tried a couple of things. But then I was like I only want to paint.”

Building her visual language

Over 15 years, that instinct evolved into murals, workshops, luxury wallpapers and hand-painted interiors for high-end homes and commercial spaces, including projects for actors Sonam Kapoor Ahuja and Nayanthara. Chokshi says none of it was carefully planned. “I started with canvas paintings, then workshops, then wall murals… thousands of wall murals. I gets bored if things become too monotonous. That’s why I never thought I could practise art in the traditional gallery format,” she reflects.

Nature slowly became central to her visual language, not immediately. “Initially, because artists like Claude Monet were so inspired by nature, I almost resisted it. I was like ‘I’m never going to paint flowers and leaves,’” she shares. 

That changed after an intensive 2,000-square-foot project in 2022 centred on botanicals and birds. “It shaped my perspective. After that, my observation towards little things around me enhanced.”

From Ahmedabad to Cannes 

Then, around a month ago, came the call from Rhea. “She said, ‘I’m planning Alia’s Cannes look and I want you to bring out your version of the French Riviera,’” Chokshi recalls of the conversation, adding with a laugh, “I was like, ‘Yes’. Obviously. Who says no?”

What followed were hours of paintwork on a partially constructed gown as Chokshi immersed herself in understanding not just the visual landscape of the Riviera, but its emotional atmosphere. “If you are in Paris, your emotions are evoked in a certain way. In Italy, you feel different. In Cannes, you feel different,” she says, explaining, “I feel colours and atmosphere deeply influence us.”

She studied ocean blues, lavender fields, sunlight along the shore and the softness of Mediterranean summers, translating them into brushstrokes across fabric. Despite the scale of the project, she stayed emotionally controlled while working. “If I’d let my mind wander, it might not have worked out,” she says. 

Interestingly, Bhatt’s is only the second outfit Chokshi has ever painted; the first was her own wedding lehenga.

The moment it went global

The reality only hit later, when she finally saw Bhatt wearing the finished gown. “I was shocked. My husband and I saw the photographs, and I was like, ‘Oh my God, what is this?’” she shares. 

The internet reacted instantly. “It’s crazy,” she says of the attention. “It’s like a bullet train and I’m sitting in it.”

Yet Chokshi remains deeply rooted in the physicality of handmade work, especially amid growing conversations around AI and creativity. “That human touch can never be replaced,” she says firmly. “Artists are not lost people like everyone says. I think artists are actually far more present than most humans. They notice every little thing.”